1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to the field of computer-based multidimensional data modeling. It is more particularly directed to identifying data that is related to selected data in a multidimensional database on a computer system.
2. Description of the Background Art
On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a computing technique for summarizing, consolidating, viewing, analyzing, applying formulae to, and synthesizing data according to multiple dimensions. OLAP software enables users, such as analysts, managers, and executives, to gain insight into performance of an enterprise through rapid access to a wide variety of data “views” or “dimensions” that are organized to reflect the multidimensional nature of the enterprise performance data. An increasingly popular data model for OLAP applications is the multidimensional database (MDDB), which is also known as the “data cube.” OLAP data cubes are often used by a data analyst for interactive exploration of performance data. New opportunities associated with the enterprise may be discovered by identifying relationships and associations in the data.
OLAP functionality is characterized by dynamic multidimensional analysis of data supporting end user analytical and navigational activities including: calculation and modeling applied across dimensions through hierarchies or across members, trend analysis over sequential time periods, slicing subsets for on-screen viewing of the multidimensional data, drill-down to deeper levels of consolidation of the multidimensional data, reach-through to underlying detail data, and rotation to new dimensional comparisons in the viewing area associated with the multidimensional data. It is frequently difficult to efficiently analyze multidimensional data due to the lack of referential information about the association of the data to other neighboring and possibly related multidimensional data.
A multidimensional OLAP system typically has multiple dimensions and may have members within each dimension. A member may be considered a name of a category used in multidimensional analysis. That is, a member may be a label associated with an edge that edge being a dimension in a multidimensional data cube. For example, “March” could be a member that identifies information that was stored relating to the month of March. Such a system that supports a multidimensional data cube is often very large, and it may be difficult to identify where the most interesting features are in a vast pool of data. More particularly it is often difficult and time consuming to identify and analyze the most interesting features when the relationship and association between the data in a multidimensional data cube is unclear.
In order to facilitate access of information in a data cube, an index that may be represented in an index data cube and that references data in the data cube may be generated. The index may be used to access selected information in a data cube more efficiently than access techniques that do not employ an index. Given an index that is used to access and select particular multidimensional data, it would be useful to present the context in which the selected multidimensional data is located as a representation of neighboring or associated multidimensional data.
From the foregoing it will be apparent that there is still a need to improve OLAP data analysis by determining the relationship between selected multidimensional data and neighboring or associated multidimensional data on a computer system. More particularly, existing systems have not been able to adequately and efficiently determine the relationship between neighboring or associated data that may be configured in a database and that is associated with selected multidimensional data.